


Adventures in Time and Space

by thankyouturtle



Series: Mercy [1]
Category: Batgirl (Comic), DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-11
Updated: 2011-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:58:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thankyouturtle/pseuds/thankyouturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Booster's gone missing, and it's Team Batgirl to the rescue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adventures in Time and Space

Stephanie was starting to seriously doubt her decision to give up the end-of-semester kegger to hang out with gargoyles. They weren't particularly chatty at the best of times, and she was feeling bored. On the other hand, they were still probably better company than Jordanna.

The familiar clanking of a grapple made her turn her head. It wasn't Batman or Robin - they were quote-unquote-unavailable at the moment. Of course, there were plenty of others in Gotham who leaped stealthily acrossrooftops, and they were only _mostly_ criminals. She groped for a couple of her batarangs, and watched with interest as the figure grew closer. It appeared, in fact, to be heading straight for her. Steph crouched down below the roofline and waited.

The figure landed softly, and pulled in her - definitely a her - grapple line. She glanced around as she did so, apparently disconcerted but Steph's disappearance. Then, in a move that was totally unprecedented, she reached up and tugged off her mask. Steph was on her feet in an instant, racing towards her.

“ _Cass_? Cass! You’re back in Gotham? But I thought you were being all,” and Steph hunched her shoulders and mimed claws on her hands, “Black Bat-y now.” Cass, her best friend! Cass, who had… just up and left her one day. Cass, who had only returned to Gotham when Steph was out of the country (although that one was probably Bruce’s fault.) Cass, who was totally dressed in her old Batgirl costume, almost as if she… wanted… her old job back…

“Stephanie?” Cass sounded like she looked - uncertain. “You… are Batgirl?”

Steph frowned; Cass seemed to have had her old hesitancy back in her speech. “Didn’t get the Bat-memo?” she asked. Cass glanced over her shoulder, as though looking for someone.

“Everything is… confusing. No… complicated,” she corrected herself. “I have a… mission.”

“The kind of mission that calls for a team-up?”

A soft whirring sound from above interrupted Steph’s overtures, and she looked up to see a small metal box that was hovering in a way that could only be described as nervously. “Batgirl, he does not appear to be here either,” it announced, in a voice that was worryingly human. “But he _has_ been here. I believe he was carried further into the past-“

“ _Cass_ ,” Steph hissed. “ _What is going on_?”

“ _Another_ Batgirl?” This was a new voice – a woman’s, and strangely familiar. “What do I do, start a club?” Steph’s eyes drifted away from the flying loudspeaker to the lady who was now standing (in heels) on the roof beside her. Steph knew that costume – she saw it every time she picked up a Batman Inc. mission from Bruce. And even without that, she’d know that incredulous, impassive face anywhere. A line or two less, maybe, but-

“The _best_ club,” she said, when she could breathe. “Um, wow. Cass, why have you been picking up costumed heroes in the past?”

“In the… future, too,” Cass told her. “In my future. Your… now.”

Steph glanced from Cass, to Babs, to… the box. “You know,” she said conversationally, “this is starting to feel suspiciously like the best day of my life.”

Thirty minutes later they were all at the Brown residence. Spunky-young-Babs was exclaiming over the size of Steph’s laptop and talking in polysyllabic words to the flying box, who, turned out, had a name. Cass was, typically, silent, watching Steph carefully. Steph was just trying to wrap her head around the whole… everything.

“OK,” she said at last. “Booster Gold’s gone missing, and he’s secretly a time agent. And Skeets here needs _you_ to find him.”

“Yes.”

“All _he_ knows about it is that Booster’s probably been kidnapped, and that his time-machine is probably being used to track down some kind of hugely powerful object that’s been broken into parts and scattered throughout time.”

“Yes.”

“And, coincidentally, your path happened to lead you to Babs, and then to me.”

“Yes.”

“God, I am _so_ glad I turned down Francisco’s invite.”

“Am I… dead?”

The question seemed to come entirely out of the blue. Steph turned a critical eye to her friend.

“I’m not a doctor, but you look pretty breathing to me.”

“Not… me. Me… now. In the future.” The anxiety in Cass’ face was heartbreaking. “You said… I left. But I don’t have any… _reason_ … to leave.”

Steph gnawed her bottom lip. There were probably all kind of rules about breaking the space-time-continuum by telling your friend in the past what her future was. “You will have a reason,” she said, eventually. “It’s a pretty good one.”

“And I don’t come… back?”

“You do! Kind of.” Steph felt a sudden wave of embarrassment. “I miss you, but I’m not very good at-“

“Got it!” Babs exclaimed. Happy to be interrupted, Steph turned to the redhead to ask what it was she "got". "Computers haven't changed _that_ much in the future," Babs continued. "And, being the completely amazing person I am, I've found exactly where the Golden Discus is meant to be. Although..." She rubbed her nose. "The when is still beyond me, I'm afraid."

Steph jumped up. "But we're on the right track, huh?"

Babs raised her eyebrows in that scary-familiar way. "'We'?"

And Cass put her hand on Steph's shoulder and said, determinedly, "We."

***

By the time they'd reached 1767 Steph was starting to get the hang of things. After all, Cass was still Cass, even if Steph couldn't say half the things she wanted to - and Babs was, well, still Babs, even if she laughed a lot more often (and _fought crime in high heels_.) She was also more... talky. Like now, while the two of them waited for Cass to finish scouting out the third of the three possible villages they might be looking for, and Babs looked over Steph with a critical eye.

"You've stopped being so jumpy," Barbara said. "I don't suppose you want to tell me why I make you so much more nervous than the _other_ Batgirl?"

Steph bit her lip again. She hoped it wasn't becoming a habit. "You were the first," she managed. "You know... the one everyone holds me up to. Even though Cass is who I always wanted to be like... you're the one everyone else wants me to be like. Except you," she added. "You just want me to be me, I think." She shrugged. "But I guess this is weirder for you than for us, huh?"

Babs' smile bordered on the ironic. "It was strange when Jay became Robin, at first, even though I'm used to it now. But Batgirl's different - it's _mine_. I never thought of anyone else becoming Batgirl, any more than anyone else could become Batman."

"Yes," Steph said with a straight face, "I certainly can't see that happening."

Babs suddenly dimpled. "I don't think it matters, if you let anything slip - about the future, I mean. When I was talking to Skeets before he gave me the distinct impression that he's not going to let us return to our own times knowing everything we know. After all, that could-"

"Rip a hole in the space-time continuum?"

"I was going to say, 'have potentially dangerous consequences', but yes. We'll just have to enjoy it while it lasts." As Cass rejoined them, Skeets trailing after her, she added, "So if you want to tell me that I live happily ever after..."

Cass and Steph exchanged glances. "It's complicated," Cass repeated.

"You do get to team-up with Black Canary on a regular basis," Steph put in hastily. "Which is more than you let _me_ do, incidentally."

Barbara looked from one to the other and grinned. "The future sounds excellent," she said. "When to next?"

***

It had been a quiet night. Er... probably. Steph certainly _remembered_ taking down a group of bankrobbers dressed as pirates, but she didn't have any visible signs of parrot attack or eyepatch burn.

"Batgirl."

It was Oracle over the comm, not Proxy.

"Yo ho, O," Steph half-sang. "What's up?"

"Something you might want to see," O said, voice flat. "I'm in my own place. Come and see me when you've got a moment."

Usually, when Steph received a summons (or, as she preferred to think of it, Orders From On High) there was some degree of urgency in them. The fact that O sounded like there was nothing urgent at all about her request was totally suspicious, and a pretty good reason to stop thinking up nautical puns and vamoose.

"What's up?" she asked again, when Oracle's ridiculous but awesome security measures had let her through.

"Here." Barbara sounded terse, and was holding out a photo. Steph took it wonderingly, and felt her jaw drop open in surprise. The photo was old - or a pretty good fake - the paper starting to crumble a little at the edges, the picture monochromatic. It showed a company of pilots, all grinning at the camera and, among their ranks, not one, not two, but _three_ Batgirls. "Zinda was going through the Blackhawk archives," Babs continued. "I've done my best to verify the photo, and it seems to be legitimate."

"But it can't be!" Steph cried. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember traveling back in time with you and Cass."

"And so would I," Barbara returned calmly. "Unless, of course, someone didn't want us to remember."

Steph looked down at the smiling figures in the photo. "Looks like we had a good time." 

"It certainly does." Babs held out her hand, and Steph passed the photo back. 

"You could get copies made," Steph said, impulsively. "For me and Cass. Just so... you know. Even if I have no idea at all why we were fighting in the First World War -"

"Second," Barbara murmured.

"- it's probably the only photo we have of all three of us, together."

Babs was silent for a long moment. Then she said, "It seems to me that that summer internship Stephanie Brown applied for in Hong Kong has accepted her. And, coincidentally, her academic advisor has been offered a research fellowship through to August in the same place."

Steph smiled so hard her cheeks hurt. "Seriously?" she asked. "This is starting to sound suspiciously like the best college vacation of my life."


End file.
